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American Newsreels of the 1930S

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American Newsreels of the 1930S W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 1998 American Newsreels of the 1930s Dennis Marklin Gephardt College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the Film and Media Studies Commons, Journalism Studies Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Gephardt, Dennis Marklin, "American Newsreels of the 1930s" (1998). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539626183. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-ta3x-4w17 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. AMERICAN NEWSREELS OF THE 193OS A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History The College of William and Mary in Virginia In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Dennis Gephardt 1998 APPROVAL SHEET This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art Approved, May 1998 Phi<Lip/J. Funigrello /\/\A^Pr^c Melvin P. Ely ^ H. Cam Walker TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv ABSTRACT v INTRODUCTION 2 CHAPTER I. NEWSREELS OF THE 193OS 7 CHAPTER II. THE INDUSTRY WHICH PRODUCED THEM 37 CHAPTER III. CULTURAL DEPICTIONS OF NEWSREELS 53 CONCLUSION 70 BIBLIOGRAPHY 75 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENT S The writer wishes to express his appreciation to Professor Philip J. Funigiello, who helped guide this project, for his constructive suggestions, patience and insight. The writer is also indebted to Professors Melvin P. Ely and H. Cam Walker for their close reading and helpful criticism. iv ABSTRACT For more than half a century the American movie-going public saw newsreels along with feature attractions. The American newsreel survived from 1910 until 1967 as a vital component of America's news diet. From the Stock Market Crash of 1929 until the entry of the United States into the Second World War the form of the sound newsreel became established. Introduced in 1927, sound technology remade newsreels by 1930. No longer relying solely on the alleged objectivity of the camera, this remarkable technology opened newsreels to a barrage of criticism. This process help define an American style of motion picture journalism which would evolve into television news. Newsreels were created, controlled and distributed by well-financed motion picture studios. They existed as part of an entertainment industry and this fact continually shaped what newsreels viewers saw. This form of motion picture journalism had the power to influence the opinions of millions of Americans. Sensing this ability to mold opinion, a wide variety of critics made scathing reviews and humorous attacks of newsreels. Others chose to censor the newsreels, sometimes removing offensive footage from the f i1ms. v AMERICAN NEWSREELS OF THE 193OS INTRODUCTION Newsreels were wonderful things. They presented a potpourri of subjects: the newsworthy, the visually spectacular, the strange-but-true, and the downright silly. In order to maintain topicality, newsreel producers released their footage on a fixed schedule--usually once or twice a week in the United States. The overall length of most newsreels hovered between ten and fifteen minutes. Journalistically, newsreels tended to shy away from contentious issues. Instead, they stuck to'ostensibly objective motion picture coverage of recent events. Nevertheless, they managed to ignite the passions of their viewers and critics at times.1 For more than half a century the American movie-going public saw newsreels along with feature attractions. The American newsreel survived from 1910 until 1967 as a vital component of America's news diet. During this period, newsreel cameramen shot some five hundred million feet of film at a variety of locations around the world. This footage remains an important yet under-used historical resource. Producers of historical documentaries have made use of only a tiny fraction of this material. Newsreels as a historical phenomenon have also received scant attention. Raymond Fielding, a professor of communications at the University of Houston, has published the bulk of the work in 2 this field: two books and one article.2 Another type of scholarship making use of newsreels concerns itself with how single issues were treated. For example, John B. Romeiser screened all Fox Movietone news segments from 193 6 to 1939 to learn how the Spanish Civil War was presented to the viewing public.3 These works, plus only a few others, form the bulk of newsreel scholarship. Historians have neglected the American newsreel. In a small way this paper seeks to correct this situation by examining the newsreels of the 1930s. From the Stock Market Crash of 1929 until the entry of the United States into the Second World War the form of the sound newsreel became established, so established in fact, that by the end of the 193 0s its style seemed fossilized. The dramatic flux of Depression era America provided visually exciting material for motion picture journalism. Newsreel cameramen aimed their cameras at happenings in the United States and around the world. Some estimates place the number of free lance cameramen across the globe at five thousand. The newsreels became an important window to the world for movie audiences. If for no other reason, newsreels deserve attention simply because they were seen by so many. In 1929 some seventy-seven million people viewed newsreels.4 This form of motion picture journalism, then, had the power to influence the opinions of millions of Americans. A discussion of the 3 form of the newsreel, the industries which created and screened them, and the criticism that erupted in the 193 0s will provide some understanding of the newsreel's importance to a society that chose to produce and "consume" them. In addition, this discussion will hopefully illustrate the value of newsreels to students of history. Contemporary documentary filmmakers make good use of newsreel footage, relying on its largely unselfconscious quality to mark time, to visually transport viewers through time. This study will explore the newsreel phenomenon of the 1930s. It will seek to learn how the nature of the industry which created newsreels altered their form. Newsreels existed within the context of an entertainment industry in which profits were more important than truth or integrity. This concern for the bottom line led to a largely self- imposed censorship, sensitive to the marketplace and eager not to upset viewers. Other forms of censorship, such as those imposed by state film review boards, will also be treated as well. This project will consider how technological changes, notably the introduction of sound film, changed motion picture journalism. It will also seek to understand newsreels of the era within a cultural framework. From motion picture dramas which treated newsreel cameramen to novels informed by the structure of the newsreels, Americans gained a sense of 4 their age through a shared idea of the newsreel. This shared idea evolved throughout the period, echoing changes in the newsreels themselves. These questions are important because newsreels informed viewers about their world and provided the format and structure of later visual news media, such as local television news shows and cable television's Headline News network. During the tremendous flux of the Great Depression, newsreels provided Americans with a sense of their world and they provide the student of history a powerful glimpse within that world. Notes 1 Liz-Anne Bawden, ed., The Oxford Companion to Film (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1976), p. 501. 2 See Raymond Fielding, "Mirror of Discontent: The March of Time and its Politically Controversial Film Issues," Western Political Quarterly. 12 (1959), 145-52; Raymond Fielding, The American Newsreel. 1911-1967 (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1972); and Raymond Fielding, The March of Time. 1935- 1951 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978). 3 John B. Romeiser, "The Spanish Civil War and Fox Movietonenews, 1936-1939," New Orleans Review. 14 (Winter 5 1987), 25-30. 4 Edgar Dale, The Content of Motion Pictures (1935; rpt. New York: Arno Press, 1970), p. 227. 6 CHAPTER I NEWSREELS OF THE 193OS Oscar Levant, the American humorist, once described the format of newsreels as "a series of catastrophes followed by a fashion show. 1,1 While this characterization holds some credence, the form actually resembled more of a newspaper of the screen. From the early 1910s, many American newsreel producers were men and women who had been trained in the newspaper business. This crossover affected the style of newsreels: a fragmented succession of often unrelated events. The structure also resembled newspapers in that they usually began with the most newsworthy of stories followed by successively less "important" ones. Raymond Fielding treats this copycat approach as a historical accident. Newsreels, he posits, could have been more dramatic and stylistic; their structure could have been cinematic as the German National Socialist newsreels of this era were.2 The borrowed format of newsreels, however, was less an accident than a natural pattern for pictorial j ournalism. In the 193 0s all substantial newsreels included sound. This remarkable and expensive technology remade the industry in only three years; 1927 witnessed the first sound newsreel and by 193 0 all producers had switched to the 7 audio-visual format. During the first years of sound production, quality was relatively low and editing techniques remained primitive. The high cost of recording sound on site led most newsreel production companies to rely on mixing and editing audio signals in the studio. Sound cameras were reserved for celebrity interviews, speeches, and like matter.
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